Facebook is a social media network with over 2.32 billion monthly active users, which is nearly 1/3rd of the world’s population. Additionally, it is the second biggest driver of referral traffic after Google, according to Parse.ly. This makes it a fantastic place to reach your target customers with ease.
Image via Parse.ly
However, many businesses like yours are using it for the same purpose - driving traffic to their websites. This fierce competition makes it difficult to get the attention of your target customers, and entice them to visit your site.
The competition became even fiercer after Facebook changed their algorithm in 2018, which shifted their focus to give users more meaningful interactions. The change resulted in a drastic reduction in the organic reach of pages. Due to this reason, it has become increasingly challenging to drive traffic to your website or even get your audience’s attention.
You’re competing with just about every business in your niche from around the world. To stand out from the competition, you need to do things differently.
Here’s how you can drive traffic to your website through Facebook.
1. Publish Content Regularly
It is essential to publish high-quality content regularly on your website. If your site remains static and doesn’t offer anything new to the visitors, it can be even more challenging to engage them. Fresh and unique content that is informative will not only catch the attention of visitors but will also encourage them to share it.
Doing this can increase the overall reach of your content on Facebook. Not only does it improve your organic reach on the platform, but it also helps with search engine optimization (SEO). This is because Google will bump up your website in the search engine results pages (SERPs) if visitors find it useful. This way, you can improve your search rankings and website traffic just by creating shareable content.
Recommended: 7 Tips to Create the Best Content for Social Media Marketing Posts
2. Use High-Quality Images in Your Posts
People love to see visual content more than reading text. In fact, Facebook posts with one or more images got significantly higher shares than ones without any images. This makes it essential to include high-quality images in your posts on Facebook. You need to make them prominent and attractive to ensure that they grab the user’s attention.
Image via OkDork
It is also a good idea to use full-size images in your Facebook posts. You can even check Facebook Insights to see the effect that different sizes of images have on your website traffic. This will allow you to come to the perfect size that gets you maximum traffic.
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3. Make Sharing Easier
Having high-quality content on your website isn’t enough. You need to make it easier for your visitors to share it too. To accomplish this, you can add a social share plug-in or Facebook Share buttons.
You can display the buttons on the sides of the article, above, or below it. It is also a good idea to add hovering buttons that move while users scroll. While you should definitely implement this on your blog, don’t ignore other pages on your website either.
While people may not share all of your pages, there may be some that they will be interested in sharing. The presence of a share button makes it easier for them to share on Facebook and other social media platforms. Doing this can help you increase your presence on social media.
4. Keep Post Length Short
It’s a great idea to have long and informative blog posts that provide value to visitors. However, on social media, the captions should be anything but long. You need to keep them short and witty to ensure that they are engaging enough for your audience.
People don’t like to read long captions while they are scrolling through their news feeds. In this case, short captions can do the trick for you. Additionally, long captions can appear excessively big when viewed on the phone.
For instance, HuffPost creates short and attractive captions for all of their posts.
Image via Facebook
AdEspresso found that Facebook Ads with about 19 words in the captions worked the best. Additionally, your captions should also serve as a teaser for your blog posts. This can make it intriguing for users and compel them to click on the link.
Image via AdEspresso
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5. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website from Facebook. This method involves collaborating with influencers. These are social media users who have become an authority in a particular niche and have a vast fan-following on Facebook.
Their audience is usually highly-engaged and takes the influencer’s word when they recommend something. You need to find influencers in your niche who create content that is relevant to your brand. They should then be checked thoroughly to see if their engagement is high and authentic. This is important because there are many fake influencers out there who purchase followers.
You can also use tools such as Influence.co to find genuine influencers. The platform allows you to post your campaign so that influencers can apply for it. From the submissions, you can select the best ones.
Once you have found the right influencers, you can reach out to them for collaborations. When they share your content or promote your website, their audience will be very likely to engage with it. This can help you generate a lot of website traffic through Facebook.
You could even feature an influencer in your posts. This will help you capture the influencer’s audience’s attention, which will also affect traffic generation.
For example, Blue Apron collaborated with Chrissy Teigen to promote their brand on Facebook.
Image via Facebook
6. Boost Your Best Posts
To get the most traffic out of Facebook, you need to reach an audience that is likely to engage with your posts. While you can organically achieve this to an extent, boosting your posts can help you reach even more people.
Facebook makes it possible to create paid promotions that will help you reach your desired target audience. You can define your target audience based on their demographics, locations, and interests.
However, to ensure that your content is well-received, you should only promote those posts that are performing well organically. Your target audience is already liking these posts, and the promotion will help you reach more people. This can give a tremendous boost to your post’s performance and you won’t end up wasting your advertising money on ineffective posts.
Buffer, for instance, only boosts posts that are performing well for them organically. This way, even with a limited budget of $40 per day, they were able to increase their traffic and engagement.
Image via Buffer
7. Use Videos
Videos work exceptionally well when it comes to catching the attention of social media users. While it isn’t possible to showcase everything through a video, you can create a short video summarizing your blog posts.
Recommended: The Anatomy of Engaging Social Media Videos
You can then post these videos on your Facebook page, and if they perform well, you can even boost them. This way, your audience will get to know more about your blog post without even leaving Facebook. Additionally, the video should be short, attractive, and engaging. All of these factors may push them to click on your link and read your blog post.
You should also include a custom thumbnail that is attractive enough to entice users to watch the video. Lastly, using human faces or products can make the video more personalized and adds a human element too.
Wishpond, for example, uses this tactic for promoting their blog posts on Facebook. They make short videos to summarize their articles. This helps them generate tremendous engagement and traffic.
Image via Facebook
8. Add Links on Your Facebook Page
While it’s great to promote your website by adding links to your posts, you could even add them on your page. There are various parts of the Facebook Page where you can add links to your website.
The “About” page on your Facebook profile allows you to add links to various pages of your website. You can add links to sections such as Company Overview and Products. These links are over and above the one website link that Facebook allows you to connect your page to.
Image via Facebook
You can also add links to your milestones or create custom tabs with links to your blog posts.
Lastly, you should also be careful when you select the call-to-action for your paid promotions. Choose text that will make users want to click on it. Additionally, the link that you add to it should direct the users to a relevant page so that they get exactly what they are looking for.
When the user’s intent is matched, they will stay on your website longer. Some of them may even become return visitors.
Recommended: How to Use Facebook Advertising to Generate Leads & Sales for Small Local Businesses
9. Share Others’ Content
While this may seem like a bad idea, sharing content from other pages or websites can be useful too. It may drive traffic to their website, but users will notice that you are open to sharing helpful content.
You should share informative content that is relevant to your market and business. It might help you get reciprocal fan shares or even shares from other companies whose posts you may have shared. So you’ll be able to get access to people’s audiences without much effort. It is also a great way to build your brand identity.
Facebook for Developers regularly shares informative content from other websites on their page.
Image via Facebook
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Final Thoughts
Facebook is a major referral traffic driver and can help you get more visitors to your website. But it’s important to create high-quality posts with attractive images to entice your audience. You can also use videos to generate more engagement and drive traffic.
You should also consider adding social sharing buttons to your blog to facilitate easy sharing. And, make sure that you add your website links wherever possible on your Facebook Page.
Boost only those posts which are performing well to get better results from your paid promotions. Lastly, you can collaborate with influencers to reach their audiences and drive more visitors to your website.
What other methods do you use to drive traffic to your website from Facebook? Let us know in the comments.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is also the founder of Content Solutions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
